Are Mainers ready to return to life without the U.S. Senate race? | Column
August 2025. The Lewiston-Auburn Balloon Festival was deemed a success, and the last of season’s lobster boat races had just wrapped in Portland Harbor.
Taylor and Travis were engaged, but they hadn’t told us yet, and Jimothy was but a nameless baby raccoon trying to get by.
We had never Googled “Totenkopf” and hadn’t thought about our second cousins in years. Text messages from unknown numbers were primarily sent by scammers posing as the DMV.
The most overplayed commercial on TV belonged to Skyrizi.
Gov. Janet Mills was still being coy about whether she’d run for U.S. Senate when a video dropped of a burly blond man in a hooded sweatshirt, fired up about access to healthcare and the futility of foreign wars.
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At that moment, life as we knew it changed for the next 14 months and counting — a roller coaster that, in a few days, will come crashing to a halt.
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Remember, it was exciting at first. People packed town halls, and pundits analyzed Reddit posts. Pleas for $5 popped up in our algorithms, and we stuck signs in our yards to show passing cars where we stood.
National commentators couldn’t stop talking about our state, prompting questions from friends and relatives around the country. People wanted to know what we thought about political leadership, a welcome change from being asked where to get the best lobster rolls.
Strangers knocked on our doors seeking our support, glossy flyers filled our mailboxes aiming to grab our attention. Our phones lit up with calls and texts asking for our opinions.
After a while, though, the barrage began to take its toll.
We started posting “no trespassing” signs and cursing the constant stream of card stock as we hauled it from the mailbox to the recycling bin.
We’ve silenced countless calls from “potential spam” and stopped looking at our text messages, knowing chances aren’t good that it’s going to be a funny meme from a friend.
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Our downtime in front of reality shows and football games has been marred by accusations of corruption set to ominous orchestral music.
It’s enough to make you want to throw a water bottle — or, worse, to wish away Maine’s precious fall in favor of it all being over.
Next Wednesday, though, how will we really feel? Can Role Model and Cooper Flagg keep Maine relevant enough for our liking? Are we ready for our political influence to revert to the rare scenarios in which it matters if we split our four measly electoral votes?
If only our representatives could convince us they cared all along and spare us the whiplash from what campaigning has become.
Think of the money and trees that regular check-ins could save, and of the votes that might actually be swayed by sustained communication with the citizenry.
Imagine choosing between candidates based on their accomplishments and not which fact-adjacent attacks seem the least concerning.
Maybe Skyrizi is right, that “nothing is everything,” and not just in terms of moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis.
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Leslie Bridgers is a columnist for the Portland Press Herald, writing about Maine culture, customs and the things we notice and wonder about in our everyday lives. Originally from Connecticut, Leslie came. More by Leslie Bridgers
